Rain
Rain seems to be symbolic on How I Met Your Mother. There have been many episodes that have a special meaning when it rains. Episode Occurrence and Who It Affected * - Robin and Ted * - Ted and The Mother * - Ted * - Barney and Robin/Lily and Marshall * - Ted and Marshall (flashforward) * - Barney and Robin (flashback) * - Ted and The Mother (flashforward) * - Ted and The Mother (flashforward) * - Robin and Ted * - Barney and Ted * - Barney and Robin (flashback) The Meaning For Rain Ted tries to do a rain dance, which ultimately proves successful, and he then goes over to Robin's. Ted yells up to her from the street, telling her to come down (alluding to his previous demands for her to "touch the ground"), and the two finally become a couple. In the same rain, as Ted heads back in a cab from Robin's apartment, Future Ted tells his kids that although New York looked the same, in one night everything had changed. Ted's high spirits quickly dampen when he finds Marshall sitting on the steps of the apartment complex in the rain, with Lily having gone to San Francisco and called off the engagement. Ted comforts him, knowing that Marshall has lost the only girl he had ever loved. Ted returns to the club to retrieve his phone, which he had left behind. He doesn’t find it, but he grabs an abandoned yellow umbrella and walks home in the rain. Future Ted reveals that his eventual wife had been at the club that night, but they did not meet and he's glad because he knows that if they had, she would not have liked him. Future Ted describes to his children a day near the beginning of his struggling solo architecture career, where a set of circumstances began his journey to meet their mother. The cold open shows Ted walking down his street with a yellow umbrella, stopping at a newsstand, giving some cash to a homeless man, and stopping at a crosswalk before a woman's hand reaches over and touches his shoulder. Robin and Barney are a couple and have to suffer a 'double date' with Marshall and Lily. Robin and Barney ignore their messages and avoid Lily and Marshall, but they eventually admit that they don't want to be "couple friends". Devastated, Lily and Marshall blame each other for the failure, citing Marshall's bizarre photo montages of trivial events and Lily's tendency to plan big outings much too quickly. After a week apart from Lily and Marshall, Robin and Barney realize they miss their friends, and head over to their condo, only to find them enjoying the company of another couple. They set up a bunch of timers outside Marshall and Lily's apartment door which leads out to where Robin and Barney are standing in the rain to make up with them. The scene flashes forward to a wedding: the church backyard seen earlier in the episode with Ted and Marshall. Ted admits to Marshall that he is nervous about his toast at the wedding and he wants it to be perfect. It is also revealed that Ted is the best man, and is called in by Lily. It starts to rain, and Ted says that he doesn't have an umbrella. Lily and Marshall agree that Barney can take off the Ducky Tie, but Marshall gains three extra slaps to his already existing final slap. Barney agrees and Marshall delivers two of the slaps, with two still remaining. In the end, it is shown that the gang had gone out after the end of the hurricane and played around in the rain, which led to Marshall going boogie-boarding and eventually crashing through MacLaren's front window - hence the sign against boogie-boarding. Robin and Barney decide to share a cab home and they reminisce about the moment after Marshall's accident when they had almost kissed but Robin's dad had called her. They make fun of what could have happened and end up kissing in the cab. Ted tells his children that getting closure on his relationship with Robin finally opened the possibility of meeting their mother, Ted walks out of MacLaren's Bar as all the people on the street walk by with yellow umbrellas. Sitting alone at a train station in Farhampton ten hours after Barney and Robin's wedding, Ted tells a nearby old woman the story of what has recently happened. Returning to the post-wedding flashforward, as Ted reads Love in the Time of Cholera waiting for the train to come in, the future mother arrives as well with a yellow umbrella, but her face is hidden from view. Robin calls Ted to help find her locket which was meant to be her "something old" for the wedding, which she had buried years ago in Central Park. When they find the box the locket was in, she confesses to Ted that If she was able to find the locket and it was here waiting for her, it would mean that the universe wanted her to marry Barney. She then opens the box and sees that it doesn't contain the locket. Robin then exclaims that the locket not being there is a sign from the universe that she shouldn't marry Barney, but Ted tells her that it isn't and she is doing the right thing marrying Barney and that the universe isn't sending her a message. Just then it starts to rain, freaking Robin out more. Ted holds Robin's hand to comfort her. Barney claims that Ted holding Robin's hand goes against the Bro Code, but Ted disagrees. Unable to decide who is right, the two ask Marshall (via video chat) to weigh in. Marshall asks the two to recreate the events, with Ted asked to hold Barney's hand and offer comfort, and see if it feels weird or not. Then it starts to rain. Ted admits he still sometimes has feelings for Robin, but promises Barney he won't do anything to get between them and that he will try to let those feelings go. When Loretta questions how Robin will care for her children if she cannot cook, Barney admits to his mother that Robin cannot have children, something Robin had confessed to him the previous fall. Barney hugs Robin asking her if it's weird that their even hugging at all, and she says it isn't.It then starts to rain and they both agree that the rain makes it weird. Category:Recurring Elements